As a follow-up to 1985 and 1991 efforts to determine its own effectiveness in providing useful information to the college community, the Office of Institutional Research (OIR) at Florida's Miami-Dade Community College conducted a self-evaluation in 1994. Questionnaires were mailed to 296 department chairs, Board members, and other professionals…

This anthology contains 52 papers on racial and ethnic diversity in higher education and is designed to reflect the collective ideas of those who teach in this area. Generally the manuscripts present ways of observing and experiencing racial and ethnic difference in American higher education institutions. Articles in part I titled…

A study explored the experiences of four adult students who served on the board of The Learning Center, a community-based literacy program. The adult education literature touched on the challenges, benefits, and limitations of participatory practices, but the three were seldom juxtaposed, raising the question of whether the limitations equaled or…

As part of a graduate research course, nine students formed a research team to carry out all aspects of a multimethod research study, including design, data collection and analysis, interpretation, and presentation of results in a final evaluation report to a local school corporation. Benefits and challenges were noted by both the instructor and…

This new annual publication, a companion volume to the fourth edition of "Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators," presents a series of concise analyses on themes relevant to educational policy, based upon selected international education indicators. The analyses are presented in the following four chapters: (1) "An Overview of Enrolment (sic) and…

The five essays included in this document focus on the First IMPACT II Teacher Policy Institute (50 New York City Public School teachers "committed to affecting real change in educational policy in this city"). "Teachers as Researchers" (Mark Silberberg) discusses the relationship between teaching and research, particularly…

This paper systematically reviews research on the effectiveness of collaborative school-linked programs. It first briefly discusses the history and current stage of practice of such programs, and then summarizes the design and findings of 55 school-linked programs with collaborative elements. Advocates of collaborative programs believe that making…

This guidebook describes opportunities for the participation of postsecondary technical institutions in the economic and entrepreneurship development of urban, suburban, and rural communities. Section 1 describes the organization and format of the guidebook. Section 2 suggests these strategies for establishing a business incubator: organizational…

As part of a Kentucky effort to improve public education and to increase taxpayer confidence in expanded educational funding, a citizen committee examined and made recommendations on approaches to school accountability and assessment, particularly student testing in the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS). The recommendations…

In an action research project, four British further education colleges compared mandatory units of three Advanced General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs)--business, art and design, and health and social care--with related General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (GCE A-level) syllabuses. Activities included a detailed comparison…

The perceived self-efficacy concept plays a significant role in predicting human performance in several areas of human effort, but self-efficacy theory has seldom been applied in the fields of adult literacy and English as a second language (ESL). This study designed a questionnaire for adult literacy and ESL learners to assess their self-efficacy…

Recent analyses of the linkages between policy analysis and politics suggests that contemporary focus on the first had been poorly attenuated to the theoretical needs of the second. This paper specifies the kinds of research in educational politics that should ensue if the politics-of-education field is to become less oriented to specific policies…

This text gives an overview of distance education for students, administrators, and practitioners in distance education. Chapter 1 discusses the study of distance education. Chapter 2 analyzes forms of nonconventional education (open, nontraditional) that may have similarities to distance education but are not to be identified with it. Chapter 3…

Institutional research has long relied on surveys to learn about student experiences. This study describes and evaluates two methods of using electronic mail to gather information from students about their experiences. Data were based on two case studies conducted during spring 1996 and fall 1997 at a 5,000-student state university. The report…

In 1983, California's Los Rios Community College District developed the Student Flow Research Model, designed to bring together data on community characteristics, student characteristics, student and program performance, and former students' outcomes to answer basic questions related to institutional effectiveness. Over the years, the District has…